


if the fates allow

by all_these_ghosts



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Christmas, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 00:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8946283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/all_these_ghosts
Summary: “I still can’t believe you got me to go ghost hunting,” she says sleepily, like she can read his mind. “On Christmas Eve.”“I still can’t believe that we shot each other on Christmas Eve,” he says. If that’s what happened.(Christmas with Mulder and Scully, 1993-2016)





	

_through the years we all will be together_  
_if the fates allow_  
_until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow_

* * *

**December 23rd, 1993**

“Got any big plans for Christmas?” he asks as Scully starts to pack up. It’s just about closing time. Mulder doesn’t like being between cases - there’s nothing good about going home at five o’clock.

Scully continues loading files into her briefcase. She can’t seriously be planning to tackle all of that shit over the holiday - she’s only taken off Friday and Monday.

Of course, that’s two more days than he’s taking off. Possibly four more, if he comes in over the weekend. Mulder spent last Christmas in his basement office. He’d snapped a branch off an evergreen tree in front of the Bureau and given the finger to the security camera. His office smelled good for days.

“My parents are coming over,” she says, and there’s this little twinge of anxiety in her voice that reassures him, somehow. He’s always imagined the Scullys as a perfect television family: the captain and his wife and their four red-headed children running around the lawn. It’s nice to think that even her family is nerve-wracking. “And my brother and his wife are flying in. Usually my parents host it, but they weren’t up to it this year, so…” 

“Yeah?”

She glances at him and sighs. “It’ll be nice,” she says, like she’s trying to convince herself. “I just have to do a lot of cleaning before they get here.”

While he hasn’t spent all that much time at Scully’s apartment, this assertion seems wildly unlikely. Her books are alphabetized. He’s sure her underwear drawer is color-coded. _Do not think about her underwear drawer_ , he reminds himself. That’s definitely one of the Ten Commandments of Platonic Partnerships.

She asks, “How about you?”

He aims for nonchalance, but doesn’t quite get there. “Drinking expired eggnog. Watching ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind.’ The usual.”

“By yourself?”

The surprise in her voice touches him. He’d assumed it was obvious.

“Yeah, the Mulders don’t really go in for big family gatherings.”

“Well, you could come over to my place.” She’s not looking at him when she says it, so he’s not sure how seriously to take the invitation.

“Nah. The fish would miss me. Thanks, though.”

Finally she stops moving paper around and looks at him. “Seriously, Mulder. You shouldn’t have to be alone on Christmas. My family is…well, I’m sure they’d be glad to meet you.”

This, too, strikes him as highly unlikely, but he keeps his mouth shut. “I appreciate the offer. Enjoy your holiday.” He pats her on the shoulder as he leaves, but her gaze follows him out.

* * *

On Christmas, Mulder has one brief, terse phone call with his parents, and one brief, absurd phone call with the Gunmen, who spent their holiday getting high and watching, inexplicably, _A Charlie Brown Christmas_.

At around eleven-thirty he’s about to call it — one more Christmas down, approximately forty to go, statistically speaking.

And then he hears a knock at his door.

Scully’s standing there, wearing a red sweater and jeans, bearing a casserole dish covered in tin foil. She holds it out to him.

“What’s that?” he asks.

She crumples a corner of the tin foil between her fingers. “I thought we could make hats,” she says dryly. “It’s leftovers, Mulder. Obviously.”

“You didn’t have to—“

“Of course I didn’t have to.” Scully walks right past him, her shoulder brushing his arm along the way, to put the casserole dish on his counter. “Merry Christmas, Mulder.”

“Well.” He shuffles his feet. “Thanks.” It comes out weirdly heartfelt. “Um. If you want, I’m watching a movie, and you could—“

“I have to get back,” she says. Reluctantly, maybe? He hopes she’s reluctant. He likes that idea a lot. “But thank you. Enjoy the food, okay?”

“Yeah. I will,” he says, and before he knows it’s happening, she’s up on her tiptoes and giving him a peck on the cheek.

It’s entirely friendly, entirely chaste, and he flushes from head to toe like a fucking choirboy instead of a grown man, and her smirk says that she sees it.

Scully lets herself out. He eats the leftovers cold out of the container then flips on the TV. _It’s a Wonderful Life_ is on.

 _Not wonderful_ , exactly, he thinks, taking a bite of Scully’s pumpkin pie and settling in to watch the rest of the movie. _But pretty fucking okay._

* * *

**December 24th, 1995**

Normally Scully spends the end of the flight with a death grip on the armrest - or Mulder’s hand - but this time she’s peaceful and looking out the window, something Mulder has never seen her do.

“Anything interesting?” he says, peering over her shoulder.

“You’re in my space, Mulder,” she complains half-heartedly.

“You made me take the middle seat, Scully. Window seat has to share.”

She nods her head toward the view. It’s late and the sky is dark. The city spreads out in an endless grid beneath them. “The lights,” she says, and he looks closer to see what she’s saying.

Christmas lights, up on every third or fourth house. More in some neighborhoods than others. It’s pretty. Looks like one of those little porcelain Christmas villages, all lit up.

"My dad used to do that," she says, a little wistfully. "He'd let us all go up on the ladder to help. Made Mom crazy. He said it was the best way to bring Christmas to Southern California. We had a palm tree in the yard, and he'd string lights all up around the trunk. Lots of families on the base put up lights. It was almost a contest, and my dad always liked to be the best.”

Mulder smirks. “I can’t believe your father was competitive. You're not like that at all.”

Scully drags her gaze away from the window to roll her eyes at him, and he just offers her a half-smile in return. Of course his own family had done nothing of the kind. They'd put up a tree on Christmas Eve and taken it down a few days later. A few expensive, neatly wrapped gifts under the tree. For all the things Mulder has believed in - now, and in his youth - he had never believed in Santa Claus.

“He’d always remind us that what looks like ‘magic’ is usually just hard work," she says, smiling.

“No wonder you’re a skeptic,” he teases.

After the plane lands they part ways, Scully heading to Annapolis, Mulder to Target. He buys a few strands of Christmas lights. Then he lets himself into her apartment, thinking about the line between _caring_ and _creepy_ , and about how closely he toes that line with her.

Mulder strings the lights up around her front windows, so she'll be able to see them from the street when she comes home tomorrow night. He even plugs them into a timer so she can't complain about wasting electricity.

He considers leaving a note, but where's the magic in that?

* * *

**January 2nd, 1998**

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says gruffly. Still, she opens her door to let him in.

“I’m just here because my cable’s broken,” he lies.

They sit on Scully’s couch. Mulder pretends not to notice the photo of a little girl - a little dead girl - Scully’s _daughter_ , and he can’t think about that too much or his heart will break, and Scully has enough problems to deal with - on her side table. The TV blares, reruns of a buddy-cop show, and it’s almost loud enough to drown out his thoughts.

Not quite.

They don’t talk about it.

Late into the night, still facing resolutely forward, she says, “I didn’t want to be alone.” Her voice is rough; she hasn’t spoken in hours.

Mulder says, “I know.”

A while later Scully goes to bed. He can hear her tossing and turning through the night; all these old buildings with their thin walls. There are things he knows about her now, after hundreds of nights in side-by-side motel rooms, that he will never tell.

Mulder stays awake on her couch, keeping watch.

* * *

**December 25th, 1998**

After they open each other’s presents they spend a couple hours in companionable silence, watching Christmas movies and drinking whiskey over ice - Scully vetoes the questionably-aged eggnog in the fridge (“you don’t age dairy products, Mulder”), and the boys consumed all of Mulder’s beer last weekend, so: whiskey.

The booze makes both of them goofy and sleepy, and around four in the morning, Scully’s drifting in and out of sleep in front of the TV while Mulder watches infomercials and memorizes the weight of her head resting on his shoulder.

Soon, he knows, he’ll have to wake her for real so she can go join the rest of the world. Scully, her mom, Bill Junior and his family, opening gifts in front of a roaring fire. Idyllic. Just for spite, he imagines it like a Norman Rockwell painting, even if he knows that Scully’s family is fucked up in all its own ways.

And either way, here she is. With him.

“I still can’t believe you got me to go ghost hunting,” she says sleepily, like she can read his mind. “On Christmas Eve.”

“I still can’t believe that we shot each other on Christmas Eve,” he says. If that’s what happened.

“That too.” Scully yawns. It’s adorable, which he resents.

He says, “You should probably get going soon.”

She glances at the clock. “I can stay a little longer.”

They settle back into the couch and he puts his arm around her shoulder, pulling her against him. This turned out to be a pretty good Christmas. And ghosts are traditional, right? They’re in _A Christmas Carol_.

Scully falls asleep on his shoulder again, and this time he resolves not to wake her until he absolutely has to. Her mouth is slightly open and she’s snoring, just a little, probably because of the whiskey - but that, too, seems adorable. He tries not to think about how totally fucked he is. Or isn’t.

Fuck.

One day soon, he thinks, he’s gonna kiss her. Consequences be damned.

* * *

**December 24th, 2003**

“This didn’t seem so bad last year.” She runs her finger around the rim of her wine glass. “Now it’s just depressing.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, but it’s just a reflex, no force or truth behind it.

“I sent my mom a card,” she admits.

He considers admonishing her, pointing out what a huge risk that is, but things between them are too fragile. He can’t take the risk that she’ll leave.

Probably she _should_ leave, but he’ll never tell her that. He doesn’t know what else is left in the world for him, if not Scully.

In the early evening she takes a nap, and he sneaks out of the apartment for a walk.

He’d started out neutral about Omaha, but now he hates it. There’s nothing wrong with it, not really, except that like everywhere else, he’s constantly afraid. Plus now it’s cold as shit, which just adds insult to injury. And this neighborhood is cheap and pretty and full of women pushing around babies in strollers and it’s a knife in the fucking heart every time.

Mulder doesn’t even know what he’s afraid of, anymore.

It turns into a long walk, even though it’s already dark and well below freezing. Mulder just zips his coat up to his chin and pulls his hat down over his ears.

No one’s out. Through the windows of houses he sees Christmas trees, real ones, lit up and covered in ornaments: some handmade, some bought in sets of two dozen from the Walmart a couple miles away. Clean, fluffy snow sits on the rooftops and clings to tree branches. Colored lights adorn every porch railing, lighting up the night. He supposes it’s beautiful.

When he finally returns Scully is pacing near the door, her eyes red and mouth drawn as she turns to glare at him.

He almost doesn’t want to ask. “What’s wrong?”

“Where did you _go_?”

Mulder starts stripping off his outerwear, untangling his scarf and brushing snowflakes from his hair. “For a walk,” he says.

She clenches her fists and looks for a second like she’s going to hit him or scream at him or something - _anything_ , he thinks, _God, anything_ \- but instead she just shakes her head and turns from him.

“Scully—“

And then she turns back. “I thought you _left_!” she cries, and he’s so relieved to hear some goddamn emotion in her voice that he doesn’t even care that it’s anger. “I woke up and you were _gone_ and you didn’t even leave a fucking note and I—“

“I’m surprised you would care,” he says, like the cold from outside has infected him.

She gapes at him, speechless.

“What am I supposed to think, Scully? You don’t touch me. You don’t even fucking look at me.”

“Jesus, Mulder—“

“You’d be glad if I left,” he says, and he knows it isn’t true but he says it anyway.

There’s an interminable pause. Finally she says, “No, I wouldn’t.”

Outside the window the snow picks up, gusts of wind howling. He shivers involuntarily.

“I used to love the snow,” she says, watching it fall. “We used to drive up to the mountains the day after Christmas, just to see it.” The corner of her mouth turns up. “And to throw it at each other.”

“I bet you had a good arm.”

“Charlie was the best. He was sneaky.” A pause. She fingers the cross at her neck. “I miss them.”

After she goes to bed, he rifles through his desk. Weeks ago he’d used some of his contacts to reach Scully’s mother, and she’d sent - by a route that was convoluted even for Fox Mulder - a card for her daughter, and a gift in a tiny box. He leaves them on the kitchen counter.

In the morning he stumbles into the kitchen after her, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Scully is holding the card in one hand, looking in disbelief at the handwriting. “Mulder…” she says.

He shrugs. “Guess Santa showed up after all.” He leans over to kiss her on the forehead, lightly, and she doesn’t even flinch. “Merry Christmas, Scully.”

* * *

**December 11th, 2008**

“Are you sure you want to invite them?” he asks, for the thousandth time.

“Mulder,” she says, and somehow she still sounds patient. Scully never ceases to impress him.

“Fine,” he sighs.

“You don’t have to be friends,” Scully says, “you just have to be friendly.”

He grumbles, “As long as he’s friendly to me.”

“Mulder.”

At least it would be on their own turf. Last year they went to Maggie’s house and it was some circle of hell. He likes Maggie, of course, even if their relationship has never fully healed - not that he blames her - but being nice to Bill for three days was a brutal exercise. Though he’d been rewarded later for his self-control.

“It’ll be nice,” she says, like she’s trying to convince herself.

“It’ll be something.”

* * *

Dinner starts out about as awkward as he’d expected. Bill shoves a potted plant into Mulder’s hands at the door and then pushes past him. Mulder turns to Scully with a pleading expression, but she just quirks an eyebrow and mouths, _Be good_.

With a sigh he puts the plant down on the side table and follows the Scullys, head down, into the kitchen.

“Maybe I’ll tell Bill that we’re getting married,” Mulder mutters in her ear, “and I’m taking your name.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Fox Scully,” he says.

“If you did that, I’d have to start calling you Fox.”

“It might be worth it.”

She swats him on the arm and he fake-winces - well, half fake; Scully hits harder than she intends to, sometimes. (Or maybe exactly as hard as she intends to - it’s hard to know.)

Maggie says grace and they all hold hands around the table. Mulder fights the urge to do something extremely immature to Bill’s hand.

And then…everything is fine.

They make conversation about nothing - how school is going for Bill and Tara’s kids, the unseasonably warm weather, a cello concert Maggie attended. They eat all of the mashed potatoes and some of the green beans. Everyone gets seconds. They all like apple pie more than pumpkin.

When they go to bed Scully thanks him, more heartfelt than he deserves, and he considers pointing out that he in fact did nothing - that Bill was cordial, that no one brought up politics or Mulder’s continued unemployment or the child they’d given up - but she silences him with a kiss and mumbles, “Take the credit, Mulder,” and he does.

* * *

**December 21st, 2011**

"This," she says, floating past him, "was a very good idea."

Scully is wearing a very low-cut bathing suit and a blissful expression, so he's inclined to agree.

Not that he would put it this way - definitely not, not ever - but not having kids does free them up to spend Christmas in arguably more pleasant ways than wrapping gifts and bracing themselves against the cold. They're at some resort she found out in the California desert - he still hasn't tried to get a passport, though at least he's finally off the no-fly list. It's seventy-eight degrees and sunny. Scully's plan is to spend the week reading and coating her entire body in sunscreen, as far as he can tell.

Mulder has other ideas.

Around sunset he goes back in the little house to shower and get dressed, and when he emerges Scully is waiting for him. "Where are _you_ going?" she asks, eyebrow raised.

"Come with me," he says. "It's a surprise."

"I hate surprises."

"There's a chance you'll hate this one," he agrees, "but you should still come.”

“Your hard sell is getting worse,” she grumbles, but of course she comes along.

They drive deeper into the desert, away from the lights and landscaping. After an hour or so of increasing emptiness they reach a lake, of all things. He pulls off the highway.

“Mulder, what is this?”

“It’s a lake, Scully. And that—“ he gestures vaguely eastward, “is a military bombing range.”

She stops him before he can say anything more. “We’re too old for this.”

“Speak for yourself.” He gets out of the car and walks around to sit on the hood. With an overly dramatic sigh, Scully joins him.

“What are we looking—“

But he points off toward the mountains. There, in the sky, are all kinds of lights: red and white, some appearing to stand still, others darting across the sky at impossible speeds. “It happens every year on the longest night of the year,” he says. “As usual, the government denies all knowledge.”

“As usual,” she says, her eyes tracking the brightest light as it moves toward the horizon. “This is weird, Mulder.”

“Yes it is,” he says, and they watch the lights till morning.

* * *

**December 25th, 2014**

She shows up at the old house unannounced. He’s bleary-eyed and fucked up, hasn’t slept in days.

“I’m still getting used to this,” she admits, standing in the threshold, silhouetted by the light. He blinks the brightness away.

“I’m not good at it either.”

She chuffs out a laugh. “I noticed.”

Even though she thinks it’s a joke he still winces. The house is in disarray — worse than normal, by a wide margin. At least there are no dishes in the sink — Scully’s biggest pet peeve — because he stopped eating off real dishes after she left. Well, he pretty much stopped eating. 

“You’ve lost weight,” she says, looking him up and down, worry in her eyes.

He doesn’t want her to worry. “It’s okay.”

“What are you eat—“

“No,” he says firmly. “You don’t get to do this.”

That stings her, he can tell, but it doesn’t matter. Most things are painful these days.

“You left. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“I’m still your doctor.”

He sighs. “That’s fucked up too, Scully.”

“Probably.” She looks down at her hands, and so does he. Her fine, agile fingers. No ring. Not even the ghost of one, a band of paler skin. It’s pretty far down his list of regrets at the moment, but he really does wish he’d gotten her a ring.

She holds out a casserole dish. An olive branch.

“Did you spend the whole day by yourself?” He doesn’t answer, because they both already know. She sighs. “You could have come over, Mulder. Mom would have been happy to see you.”

This frustrates him. “I’m not going to do that.”

“She’d _like_ to see you.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” In fact, he _knows_ that it’s not true. He knows that Maggie has never really forgiven him for leaving, has never really forgiven him for losing William. Maggie blames him, and he’ll take it on the chin. Better him than Scully.

Maggie has never really forgiven him, and he doesn’t think Scully has, either.

“I wish you wouldn’t just…” She trails off, and Mulder’s feeling just combative enough to call her out.

“What?”

“Hide here. Moping. Whatever you’re…Mulder, I hate seeing you like this.”

“I know you’re not a psychologist, Dr. Scully, but that’s not helpful,” he snarls.

She purses her lips so hard they turn white. “I don’t need to do this,” she says finally.

“Then don’t. I’m not your responsibility anymore.”

“I don’t want it to be like this. And it’s…it’s Christmas.”

He leans on the doorjamb, arms crossed. “It’s not my job to make you feel better about that.”

They stare at each other for a minute, but Scully is the one who loses and looks away. Somehow it doesn’t comfort him.

“I should go,” she says.

“Probably.”

She reaches into her bag. “I got you something.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Just take it, Mulder.”

He grabs the package out of her hands, but he doesn’t open it, and he won’t, not until she leaves. He’s not willing to perform for her anymore.

When she leaves, something’s been lost: her normally perfect posture gone, she slumps off to the car. He hates himself a little for making her look like that, but he’s used to hating himself a little. Or a lot.

He puts the present, still wrapped, on the floor where the tree used to go. Maybe he’ll open it tomorrow.

* * *

**December 24th, 2016**

This year they have a fake tree.

Somehow Mulder’s developed some kind of weird allergy and the wreath Scully brought home after Thanksgiving sent him into convulsive sneezing fits, so a few days ago they went to Target and picked out a reasonably good-looking plastic tree.

And now Scully’s barefoot on a step ladder she found in the attic, trying to hang ornaments on the higher branches of the tree. Mulder is assisting by not laughing at her. At least not out loud.

“You could help, you know,” she says, reaching up on her tiptoes to stick a red bulb on a bare branch.

Mulder looks up from his book, grinning. “I’m good.”

Something hits him in the shoulder then bounces to the floor. It’s a little plastic Snoopy ornament.

“Where did this come from?” he asks, turning it around in his hands. He thought he knew all of her ornaments. They’ve spent a lot of Christmases together.

There’s a pause, and then Scully turns to look at him. “It’s from my mom’s,” she says quietly. “It was one of Charlie’s, when we were kids. It was...it was just what was in my hand.” She sounds like she's apologizing. To a ghost, probably.

He nods, then sets Snoopy carefully upright on the side table.

Scully goes back to the tree and Mulder wanders into the kitchen. He heats up a pot of hot chocolate — not the kind from the packet, the good kind, the kind Scully taught him to make a thousand years ago. Real milk, chocolate flakes. After it’s all melted in, he pours the hot chocolate into a couple old FBI mugs and brings them back into the living room.

She gets down off the stepladder. “Thanks,” she says, smiling at him over the rim of the mug.

Once they’re done with their drinks, he starts taking ornaments out of the box and handing them to Scully so she can hang them. They work in perfect tandem, like always.

Buried at the bottom is a ceramic UFO, silver paint chipping. “I forgot about this one,” he says, passing it up to her.

She grins. “You got this in Missouri, right?”

“The abductee with the Christmas store,” he confirms. “She wanted to give it to me for free, but I wasn’t sure that was allowed. You know. Ethics laws."

“There was a whole room of Santa figurines,” she recalls, almost wistfully.

“Creepy,” he agrees.

The UFO goes at the front of the tree, near the top, in a place of honor. It seems appropriate.

There’s also a “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament. A yellow globe with a picture of a teddy bear, blue cursive text. Mulder’s good at swallowing his grief, but it catches up to him for a moment. Something in his throat.

Scully notices the pause and looks down at him. And just says, “Oh.”

“Do you…do you want this one?”

There are wounds that don’t heal, no matter how much time passes.

After a minute she says “Yeah.” And she hangs that one too, not far from the UFO. 

They still don’t talk about it. He’s starting to think they might never talk about it, but they’re rebuilding their relationship around that absence anyway. Maybe it’ll be okay.

They get down to the bottom of the box. The star for the top is down there, and Mulder blows the dust off and holds it up to her.

“Do you want to?” she asks.

He nods, and she climbs down the step ladder so he can climb up. He sticks the star on the top. “Good?”

“Perfect,” she says.

And it’s something like that.

Just like they used to, Scully turns off the lamps next to the couch and Mulder plugs in the tree. They stand back to admire their handiwork. (Well, mostly Scully’s handiwork.)

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” he hums tunelessly.

When they stretch out on the couch - Scully in front, Mulder behind her, his back pressing into the couch cushions - it’s familiar in a way that feels good. He’s starting to believe that _this_ could be good again - that the rest of his life could pass in a way that is at least pleasant, and occasionally even better.

“What are you thinking about?” she says quietly. The room is dark except for the twinkling lights in the tree. He’s always felt like they were in their own self-contained world, just the two of them, but for once it feels like a blessing instead of a curse.

“You,” he says. “This.”

“Me too,” she says. And then, after a minute, “Merry Christmas.”

He hums, “Through the years, we all will be together.”

“That’s a different song, Mulder.”

“If the fates allooooow,” he croons, directly into her ear.

“And I thought I had a bad singing voice,” she grumbles good-naturedly.

“I like it when you sing to me,” he says, and goddamn does he mean it.

After a moment, she picks up tunelessly where he left off. “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

“That’s the sad version, Scully,” he pouts.

He can see her thinking. Brow creased, lips pursed. She says, “No, it’s not.” He pulls her closer so she’s enveloped in his arms, her shoulder blades pressing against his chest. All of her edges blurring into him. “What else can we do?”

It’s quiet in their house, just faint outside noises slipping in: the wind picking up speed, the occasional howl of some animal in the snow. It’s almost midnight, and all over the world, he thinks, good little children are falling asleep, dreaming of magic and wishes and flying fucking reindeer.

In front of the tree, all lit up, they fall asleep. Scully in his arms and all is right with the world again, or at least some things are. All is calm. All is bright.

And the morning always comes.

* * *

_and have yourself a merry little Christmas, now._


End file.
